Leadership Journal

What does it mean to give spiritual care? To shepherd a soul?

These are the most basic questions of pastoral ministry, yet they can sometimes be difficult to answer.

Few have given clearer, more pointed answers than Eugene Peterson. Eugene founded Christ Our King (Presbyterian) Church in Bel Air, Maryland, and served as its pastor for twenty-nine years. He has written many books about ministry, including Working the Angles; Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work; and The Contemplative Pastor (all Eerdmans).

Four years ago, Eugene became professor of spiritual theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He divides his time between teaching and translating the Bible into a popular, contemporary rendering known as The Message (NavPress).

Leadershipeditor Kevin Miller visited Eugene and his wife, Jan, in their apartment just a block from Regent College, which sits on the lush, evergreen campus of the University of British Columbia.

We soon found that to talk about pastoral care requires defining what it means to be a pastor.

Today, people come to pastors for help with addictions, abuse, incest, and other complex problems that didn't seem as common a generation ago. What can a pastor do for someone that a mental health provider cannot?

Peterson: I guess I want to question the premise: Do pastors face more difficult problems today than in previous generations?
I know this is a mixed-up, difficult, damaged generation. But it's arguable that the main difference today is not how much people are hurting, but how much they expect to be relieved from their hurting.
The previous century suffered just as much; in fact, probably much more. Just think of all the illness, death in childbirth, infant mortality, plagues. The big difference today is that we have this mentality that if it's wrong, you can fix it. You don't have to live with any discomfort or frustration. And the pastor is in the front line of people who get approached: "Make me happy. Make me feel good."

What do you do, then, when a parishioner assumes you can fix his or her problem?

You have to go back a step and ask, "Why am I a pastor? What is my primary responsibility to this congregation?"
The most important thing a pastor does is stand in a pulpit every Sunday and say, "Let us worship God." If that ceases to be the primary thing I do in terms of my energy, my imagination, and the way I structure my life, then I no longer function as a pastor. I pick up some other identity.
I cannot fail to call the congregation to worship God, to listen to his Word, to offer themselves to God. Worship becomes a place where we have our lives redefined for us.
If we're no longer operating out of that redefinition, the pastoral job is hopeless. Or if not hopeless, it becomes a defection. We join the enemy. We've quit our basic work.

My guess is that the average person coming for pastoral care doesn't understand that.

In large parts of North America, leaders of the church have advertised, ...